Implementing GASB 45: Recommended Best Practices in Local Government

The Governmental Accounting Standards Board issued Statement No. 45—Accounting and Financial Reporting by Employers for Postemployment Benefits Other Than Pensions in 2004, requiring local governments to actuarially determine their annual required contribution to fund other postemployment benefits (OPEB) and to account for the unfunded amount as a liability on annual financial statements. This article discusses best practices on the implementation and management of this accounting standard, including actuarial practices, funding decisions, and benefit changes. It also presents how Phase I cities and counties in North Carolina implemented Statement No. 45 for further explanation. The hope is that these best practices will serve as a guidepost for making OPEB policy decisions, especially among smaller local governments, on the criteria of financial accountability and sustainability.     

The Moral Mirror Image of Crime: A Comparison of Recorded Crime and Crime Recorded in Fiction

Moral and ethical aspects of crime are often ignored in most criminological research. In order to probe these two dimensions, crime recorded in fiction was compared with statistically recorded crime. Two hypotheses were tested: the first suggested that crime fiction portrayed the “reality” of actual statistics, while the second suggested that crime fiction was totally unrelated to crime statistics. Comparing data obtained from a North American literary journal and crime statistics obtained from a Canadian province, the results of the study supported the second hypothesis and indicated that crime fiction was totally unrelated to recorded statistics. Crime fiction seemed to represent a moral pacemaker of the perceived fears of the public, while crime statistics seem to represent the criminal pulse of society.

The negative correlation between fiction and recorded statistics is a significant find in that it indicates the reading public's preoccupation and fascination with a very small segment of criminal activity in society—an unrealistic fear of serious injury or death due to violent crime, far out of proportion with reality especially when impending doom is much more probable on the highways in automobile accidents.     

Culture,Philosophy and Crime: The Japanese Experience

As societies modernize, one usually sees rapidly increasing rates of conventional crime. Contrary to this trend, Japan has experienced patterns that have either declined or remained basically horizontal during this process. In fact, this Oriental society is one of the few nations that has not had a positive development/crime correlation. Expanding on a societal explanatory approach suggested by Reischauer, this article describes how cultural traditions within Japan may explain this phenomenon, how their dark side of crime is also related to these cultural features, and how Implications for research are specified.     

The Uganda Resettlement Board and Hiving-off: Some Possibilities for Future Research

An address by the Chairman of the Uganda Resettlement Board to the Annual General Meeting of the RIPA on 10 May. Sir Charles was Permanent Under-Secretary of State at the Home Office from 1957 to 1966 and until recently Deputy Chairman of the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority. He had completed two years as Chairman of the Institute's Executive Council.     

War for the Floor: Partisan Theory and Agenda Control In the U.S. House of Representatives

This article extends recent research on partisan agenda control in the U.S. House of Representatives to the issue of procedural control of the legislative agenda via special rules. In particular, we draw out a facet of cartel and conditional party government theories that has not been addressed in prior analyses: the simultaneous interrelationship between positive and negative agenda control. Using roll‐call data on two procedural matters—votes to order the previous question on a special rule and votes to adopt a special rule—over the 1953–2002 period, we found that, in the area of procedural control of the floor agenda, the majority party's amount of agenda control depends to a significant degree upon the party's homogeneity and power.